Over a thousand Australian same-sex couples to travel to New Zealand to wed

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I lived in The Netherlands for 3 years with my partner. We chose not to get married there as we are both Brits and it would not be recognised in the UK. I doubt many Australians will bother. Why fly to NZ where marriage is legal for ALL only to return to Oz where your marriage is not recognised. Australia will catch up eventually but probably after the US allows same-sex marriage.

Just because you can’t yet marry in the UK doesn’t mean you shouldn’t marry elsewhere. The more gay couples marry outside the country, the greater the impact will be on government to get a move on. They can only ignore it for so long. 1,000 couples or more will send a very strong message to the Australian Government. British couples should have done it before and after CPs were introduced. Instead, they were lulled into a false sense of equality. Apathy doesn’t yield results, you have to be pro-active to make a difference, no matter how long it takes. Doing nothing achieves nothing. If it hadn’t been for the ECHR, there wouldn’t even be CPs in the UK. Labour didn’t voluntarily introduce them either. Same with gays serving in our military. It will take decades for the U.S. to catch up. I predict Australia will beat them to it.

I don’t understand. “Same with gays serving in our military. It will take decades for the U.S. to catch up.” Gays serve openly in the U.S. Military now as Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was repealed. Plus marriage equality exists in 9 states and the Washington D.C. I tend to think either the UK or the USA will move and the other will follow quickly. But decades???

I agree with you. There are no benefits in Australia to being married overseas. There are only downsides. If either of you are on a pension, they will either reduce that individuals pension or stop the money coming in at all. A money grubbing exercise if I ever saw one.
The Australian government is only interested in using the Gay & Lesbian population. They use us for our taxes and they give us nothing in return. They treat us like second class citizens and dare to debate our rights to full equality under the law. And when we dare to question them, they roll out the old, but we’ve already repealed “100” pieces of legislation that would end with us being treated the same as Hetero De Facto couples. Ignoring the fact that that’s still discrimination.
I despise our politicians. They’re just spineless, backstabbing, liars and thieves.

Richard, and Grumpy Gay, imagine you are a member of the Australian government in, let’s say, one year’s time. You, and all your fellow MPs hear one day, and from a highly reputable source, that in the eight months since homosexual people were permitted to share the institution of marriage in New Zealand A THOUSAND AUSTRALIAN HOMOSEXUAL COUPLES have flown the Tasman Sea in order to marry each other in New Zealand. That’s TWO THOUSAND of your own Australian citizens.

Now, let’s say you are a bigot and you reply “So what!”. Listen to all those many other voices, including other MPs, throughout Australia who are now pointing the finger at you and rightfully saying “SHAME!”

You have to chip, chip, chip at that block in every way you can until you achieve what is rightfully yours.

Oh come on, like that will make any difference. Tunbull has come out in support of marriage equality, and yet, he followed to LNP party line and voted against it. He had no influence over Abbott. Nobody in the LNP had the backbone to stand up for their own convictions. The Labor party is just as bad. My own local MP assured me that he supported equal marriage before the last federal election, then went on to say that he couldn’t support it when it came down to the vote.
And why? Well, according to him, his electorate didn’t want it. So I guess I don’t count as a human being in his electorate.

Our politicians are selfish, sociopathic narcissists who will only ever think of themselves. Even the gay ones are like that. Nothing will change in this country in my lifetime. I can most certainly assure you that this country is one of the most vile and hatefilled places anyone could ever visit, and it’s all because of our disgusting selfish politicians.

I’m glad you’ve said that. I’ve have never been able understand the relatively recent fashion for having weddings in country that one has no connection to, and for gay people to do it where there’s an inequality of legal recognition does seem a waste of time and expense that’d be better used to urging change in one’s own country.

I feel terribly sorry for gay Australians, especially now that even conservative politicians in NZ have nailed their (rainbow) colours to the mast so effectively.

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